Chapel Hill, NC (SportsNetwork.com) – North Carolina guards P.J. Hairston and Leslie McDonald will be held out of the 12th-ranked Tar Heels’ season-opening game against Oakland on Friday due to what the university termed an “ongoing compliance issue.”<\/p>\n
Head coach Roy Williams told the media Thursday that a resolution on both players’ eligibility status is still pending. The Raleigh News Observer reported that the NCAA is conducting separate investigations as to whether the two received impermissible benefits.<\/p>\n
Hairston led the Tar Heels in scoring at 14.6 points per game as a sophomore last season and connected on 89-of-225 attempts from 3-point range. He had been suspended by Williams in late July following a citation for reckless driving, but was given a go-ahead to practice with the team on Sept. 26.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old also was arrested for marijuana possession while being stopped by police in a rented SUV back in June, though those charges were ultimately dropped after Hairston completed a drug assessment program.<\/p>\n
McDonald, the lone scholarship senior on this season’s North Carolina roster, averaged 7.2 points and 2.1 rebounds in a reserve role in 2012-13. He was suspended for three games during his junior campaign for academic reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapel Hill, NC (SportsNetwork.com) – North Carolina guards P.J. Hairston and Leslie McDonald will be held out of the 12th-ranked Tar Heels’ season-opening game against Oakland on Friday due to what the university termed an “ongoing compliance issue.” Head coach Roy Williams told the media Thursday that a resolution on both players’ eligibility status is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncaa-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}